Category: Ekphrasis

The painter knows perspective well.
The Bathroom at Twenty-Nine
Rotates around a single point,
No empty hurricane eye,
No clear inside/outside,
More like a horizon —
The ‘no-line’ between
What swirls down
And its aperture.

Naked hangers,
Drained hot-water bottle
And separate sleeve, the bare
Light-bulbs, all revolve down
Until you have to be standing
On the ceiling. Beneath you:
The woman squeezing soap
over a hollow frame,
the shape of a man.

2. Sculpture

The surprise when I look to my right:
I was sure that wall was straight!
I walk along it; paintings to sculptures.

A Man Amongst Red Trees, his cock
Hanging out, he is about to cover
His eyes and run, fear or discomfort.

Two Grey Figures in short-sleeved suits,
They seem to be made of a day of bad rain.
Something goes whispered between them.

In the Museum of Modern Art, New York,
I remember being amongst the trees,
Lamp-posts, bent or curving, some hung

Half-way up a wall, midsections exposed.
Anxiety pills, over-sized and pink,
Frozen in towers about to fall.

3. The Critics

In the Museum Basement
I think no one is around.
We make love together
quietly among old art
sleeping frames and stone.

But someone walks up behind me
As I stand imagining in the hall.
I turn myself off, shake loose
unfamiliar perspectives of you.
I shuffle my thoughts.

I send a museum postcard to you,
The painting on the front, my poem
On the back. I think I feel bad,
I want you to know and not know.
I let it go. Be nothing again.